xkcd #2943: Unsolved Chemistry Problems
xkcd #2943: Unsolved Chemistry Problems
Alt text:
I'm an H⁺ denier, in that I refuse to consider loose protons to be real hydrogen, so I personally believe it stands for 'pretend'.
31 comments
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They told me at school that ‘p’ meant ‘negative log’. So ‘pH’ means ‘the negative log of the concentration of Hydrogen ions in moles/litre’.
pH 1 is 1 x 10-1 (strong acid)
pH 7 is 1 x 10-7 (neutral)
pH 14 is 1 x 10-14 (alkaline)
(Chemistry was a long time ago, though)
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The xkcd breaks it down for us, basically we don't know because the person who coined the term never specified what it was. It's either: puissance, potens, or potenz. Which means potency in French,
DutchDanish and German, the three languages the scientists published in.-
Dutch and Danish are not the same language. So yeah, the Danish scientist published in Danish, not Dutch.
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I was taught it meant 'potential' but that was 6th Grade in the US, so I guess it was all a lie.
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Thank you. I think the decades-old chemistry-class flashback distracted me from thoroughly absorbing the full post!
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Can the term potency also be used to refer to the exponent in English? Because that is what is meant by the terms in the other languages and I haven't come across that usage of the word potency in English
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You're missing a 4 in the alkaline line
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Thank you (4 now added!)
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I assumed it was rho (ρ) of hydrogen since rho is used for density...
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It stands for peeps mcgoo
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It stands for "piled".
31 comments
https://explainxkcd.com/2943
You need a 4 year degree to understand the wall of text in that explanation.
I was about to say "not really," but then I remembered that I have a couple of those, so yeah, probably.
I really hope you're joking. It's written with high school level vocabulary at most.
Explainexplainxkcd.com when?
s0n